Chapter 19: Fighting Back (2)
Like how magic users seemed to have an affinity for certain elements, dragons were also limited to certain elements. For some odd reason, the elements that dragons were limited to, and thus the elements their breath attacks carried, were based off their color. That said, a red dragon could only shoot out fire, a blue dragon could only shoot out ice and water, and a yellow-green dragon like this one could only shoot out lightning.
A dragon's breath attack was essentially a powerful beam of concentrated mana. While I, being an archmage, have decent resistance against magic attacks, such breath attacks were still devastating. If one were to compare the breath attack to the rain, then my resistance would probably be enough to block one drop of water. I was only natural that I had to throw my staff away, to minimize the risk of taking a direct hit from the dragon.
Speaking of which, I found out my staff had the "lightning rod" enhancement about a year ago. The incident that happened that day made me change my views towards religion, and gave me a mild phobia of rain. I suppose I could talk about that day some time after the dragon goes away.
In any case, back to the issue at hand, what hope we all had that the dragon would fly away had disappeared as it descended upon the town. It landed by the command fortress and coiled itself around the observation. The dragon quietly stared at everyone on the ground. Everyone cautiously looked at the dragon, still holding onto the slight glimmer of hope that the giant creature would leave us all alone.
"Don't make any sudden movements. Just back away slowly, and don't do anything stupid. It might leave us alone if we don't provoke it."
The barracks commanding officer quietly spoke to us all, leading the way towards a slow retreat. The barracks troops along with everyone else in town cautiously stepped away while maintaining eye contact with the dragon, just to be ready to bolt for their lives in case the dragon would attack. At our rate of movement, we should probably get to a safe distance away from it in a few minutes.
"Hey, what's that on the dragon?"
From underneath the dragon's wings, a figure unexpectedly emerged. Judging by the stature and armor on that figure, it seemed like a human soldier had either latched onto or got abducted by the dragon and was carried over to here. After taking a quick glance around, the soldier did his best to stand upright, then put his hand on the scabbard by his waist, pulled out his large sword, and made a loud declaration.
"To think I would be brought over to enemy territory like this! Very well, I shall let myself die as a hero by this dragon than as an insignificant being by the hands of the devilish scum here!"
Hey, I'm not some devilish scum. And the people around me seem like nice people.
Nonetheless, following his declaration, the soldier gripped his sword tightly with both hands and leaped up. Using his body as a heavy weight, he leaned forward to push his sword down with as much might as possible as he came down from his leap. The sword pierced through the dragon's thick scales and dug half of its blade into the dragon's body, causing the dragon to let out a cry of pain. It quickly uncoiled itself from the observation tower and violently shook its body, hurling away the soldier under its wings. Perhaps by sheer luck, the soldier appeared to have landed safely on top of the observation deck.
Well, it was nice that I didn't have to witness a brutal death, but this is bad. Outraged at the sudden attack, the dragon turned towards the barracks sector where most of the soldiers were standing and let out a deafening roar. Sparks formed around its wide open mouth as a large magic circle began to form in front of it.
"EVERYONE TAKE COVER!"
At the sight of an imminent breath attack, all the present commanding officers yelled out for everyone to take cover. The soldiers frantically dispersed, chaotically running towards any sturdy structure they could see. Such a measure was probably futile, since a building would easily be destroyed by a breath attack anyways, but any bit of cover gave a slight bit of reassurance.
As the dragon breathed into the magic circle, a loud boom rang through the sky, and a large yellow beam was shot out of the magic circle. The beam strangely broke in half as it traveled, with half of it hitting the ground about 50 meters in front of me, and the other half hitting somewhere closer than that behind me. Two loud explosions boomed out as the beams hit the ground, and the shock wave from the impact behind me was strong enough to lift me into the air. The push was strong enough that I ended up doing a full frontal flip during that short flight, and I had a disturbing realization as I saw what was behind me while in the air, after going through half of the flip: that half beam had just hit the location where my staff was thrown towards.
"All soldiers! Prepare to counterattack!"
Luckily, the two beams did not make a direct impact on anyone, but tens of soldiers standing near the impact points were either thrown into the air or lost their footing. Since the dragon attacked us, there was only one option now: keep it in one place by whatever means necessary so that the artillery units can fire some clean shots at it.
"Shields and spears, formation A! Front of sector 3!"
All melee troops close to the dragon grabbed hold of their shields and spears and quickly got into a testudo formation, a formation where shields were held close to each other with spears pointing through the gaps that made the group of soldiers look like a spiked tortoise shell. The large orcs and ogres were holding giant shields, while the shorter units were pointing their spears out of the gaps.
A creature as large as a dragon could easily crush anyone to death with its massive body, so the best option to slow its advance and lower the risk of getting crushed or trampled was to create a tight defense to hinder it. Behind the large tortoise wall, archer units tied metal wires to the tails of the arrows, while the cavalry and flying units readied ropes and grappling hooks. It looks like the soldiers were planning on creating a large net to ground the dragon in place.
"Be ready to reinforce the wall! Anyone not in battle, be ready to extract casualties from the field!"
The soldiers in the testudo all gave out a large shout to attract the dragon's attention, while a few soldiers idle behind the wall picked up nearby rocks and debris from the ground to throw at the dragon. Provoked, the dragon swung its tail at the testudo wall, causing dozens of soldiers to fly backwards. Those who didn't get hit by the tail got knocked to their feet as a result of the other soldiers' shields dragging theirs backwards.
As the dragon's attention was focused on the wall, the archers launched their wire attached arrows at the dragon, while the cavalry and flying units advanced forward to throw their ropes and grappling hooks in an attempt to net the dragon. Melee units quickly rushed over to the wall either to replace those that got knocked away, or to drag out those who looked like they could not stand back up.
The wires and ropes seemed to be inefficient, as the dragon easily shook them off. Some unfortunate cavalry units that couldn't let go of their ropes in time were pulled off of the ground and thrown into the air. Several soldiers from the back ran towards where the cavalry and centaurs landed in order to take them to safety.
While the grounding tactic was not yet successful, it served as a good enough distraction for the dragon that a new testudo wall could be formed before the dragon noticed. This formation seemed to work to some degree, as the dragon drifted back slightly after seeing the new wall in front of it. There weren't any spears stuck to the dragon's tail, but it looked like there were some scratches on its scales.
The dragon once again let out a loud roar, and a new magic circle formed in front of its open mouth. This time, it looked like the dragon was aiming at the wall.
"Spread the wall!"
At the shout of the commanding officer, the wall broke in half at the middle as the soldiers on each half sidestepped in unison to two sides while still maintaining their formation.
As a thunderous exploding sound rang through the sky, a new beam was shot out of the magic circle and once again broke in half. Half the beam hit the crater where my staff laid, while the other half hit the ground at the gap in the wall, once again sending tens of soldiers off their feet. Seeing how my staff was still intact after being hit by two powerful breath attacks, I started wondering what other bizarre enhancements it had that I was not aware of.
In any case, the soldiers once again repeated their process of attempting to bind the dragon down and extracting injured comrades off the field, while buying time for those working on recreate the tactical wall. While the number of casualties were kept to a minimum due to the dragon's delayed attacks, I figured this couldn't keep going for long, as the troops would eventually tire out.
After the dragon shot out two more breath attacks, general Denato joined the fray. Seeing the general charge in, the troops that were showing signs of weariness after the third breath attack regained their morale and swiftly charged at the dragon alongside their leader. Unlike the flying units that held ropes and grappling hooks, the general instead held a great axe and took a bold heavy swing at the dragon's body.
The axe cleanly hit its target, going through the dragon's thick scales, resulting in a minor cut on its body. The creature angrily turned its gaze at general Denato and roared.
The general tried to quickly erect a magical shield and fly away from the dragon, but the creature's speed was too high. It rammed its head into the commander, sending him crashing into the ground.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone